Happy UN Career Podcast

Are you a bit of a time optimist? 

Do you often take on a new task thinking: “Oh - I can easily squeeze this in between the next two meetings”? 

Only to find that you needed the time between meetings to go to the bathroom, find your papers, respond to an urgent email and a question from a colleague...

And at the end of the day, you’re feeling deflated and behind in your work – even if you’ve been crazy busy all day? 

If you recognize this kind of scenario - then today’s episode is for you! 

I’m going to share what I call “3 secret steps” to how time estimation can make your workday less frazzled and support your UN Career. 

And it’s not a gimmick when I talk about secrets here, because the skill of time estimation seems to be a well-kept secret in most organizations I’ve worked with, and definitely also in the UN! 

You can find the show notes for this episode at www.barbarakandersen.com/25.

Lack of time estimation means lack of realism

Does that sound dramatic? Well, I’ve taught personal effectiveness tools to hundreds of clients and whenever we discuss to-do lists and the value of time estimation, people will jump through all kinds of hoops to avoid doing it.

But when they sit down with me and we go through their to-do list together, it turns out that often their lists are off the charts. And sometimes wildly off the charts. 

Because what they write down is what they’d LIKE to get done. Not what they have time to do. 

I see people planning tasks for 8 or 10 hours, when maybe they only have 3 or 4 hours, considering meetings, lunch and other planned events.

So, what does it mean for your workday, when your planning is unrealistic? It means that very often you don’t get done what you had planned which has two unhappy side effects:

1. You feel behind – and that makes you feel deflated 
2. You easily get into situations where you have trouble delivering what you have promised to others

Both of which are bad for your self-esteem and can affect your reputation in the long run.

3 secrets to how time estimation can improve your work and your UN Career

Without some element of time estimation, it’s impossible to get a realistic picture of how much time you have available – and how much time you need. 

So, why don’t we all do it? Well, as far as I can see there are three reasons for that:

• Nobody taught us that we should do it – or how to do it!
• When we hear about it we suspect it will be difficult and take too much time!
• We don’t want to face the fact that we don’t have time for everything. And I’ll share an example of that in a moment. 

So today I want to share with you the 3 simple steps to make realistic and effective planning with time estimation:

1. Write your tasks down.
2. Estimate how much time you think you need for each task, and write it down next to the task.
3. Add up the time you’ve estimated and compare to how much time you’ve got available. 

So, as you can see it’s not rocket science. The secret lies in being consistent!

If we for example look at your workday in the office, it might look like this...

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/25 where you’ll also find the detailed description of how to use the 3 steps, I mention above. 

I’m excited to share an interview with my friend and former colleague in the UNDP – and someone I consider a mentor - Ms Christine Heyting.

Christine is Australian and we met in 2013 when she worked with UNDP Headquarters in the area of performance management and leadership development. Since then, she’s been a regular contractor for various UN agencies doing missions on four continents. 

Before that, she was an HR Director in the private sector for about 15 years. 

I asked Christine to come on the podcast because I think that with her wealth of HR and leadership experience - combined with her experience from both inside and outside the UN - she has a unique perspective to share. And she’s also a lot of fun to talk to!

Christine shares lots of advice from her experience in areas such as:

• imposter syndrome
• feeling stuck
• networking
• mentoring (as well as reverse mentoring, which was a new concept for me!)
• plus some very practical tips on moving into consulting

I’m certain therefore that there is something to take away for every one of us and I really hope you will enjoy this interview as much as I did!

If you enjoyed this episode, then please think about sharing it with a colleague or a friend in the UN who might be motivated or inspired by Christine’s tips and advice. 

See the full show notes at: www.barbarakandersen.com/24. 

You can read more about Christine HERE.

If you're interested in more tips on going the consulting way, you can refer to the book Christine recommends in the interview: Elaine Biech: "The New Business of Consulting" 

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/23 where you’ll also find the 3 keys to take control of your own reality.

This episode is about a topic that is on the one hand very basic – but on the hand quite essential for how you can effectively - and successfully - deal with your career. And your life! 

Simply put, it's about working with the reality you’re in!

Or dealing with the hand you’ve been dealt, you could say.

I’ve noticed how we spend a fair bit of time and energy wishing that things were different from what they are.

That's quite human and natural, but the problem is when we get stuck in dreaming of what the perfect state should be – and then lament about why the world isn’t like that. 

And that’s just not very helpful when it comes to taking action to move forward in the direction you want to go.

One of my favourite teachers taught me this great sentence that has inspired and helped me a lot:

“When you fight reality, you lose. Not only every time – but every single time!”

Now, that doesn’t mean that we have to like or approve of the reality. Or that we have to keep living with it. But it means that we have to acknowledge – or accept - that the reality is what it is right now. 

You have to acknowledge the reality of how your organisation operates, what the rules are, what your supervisor’s choices are, etc. Because only when you do that, can you find out what is the best way to move on – given the reality you’re operating in.

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/23

Hello, and welcome to this 4th episode in a small series I’ve called: “Plan and Succeed”.

 Previously in this series, I’ve talked about effective planning principles, goalsetting and the underrated importance of having an overview. All of these things are of course interlinked and influence each other, but in this small series, I’m trying to take them apart a bit so that you can apply them more easily in your own work and life. 

Find the FULL show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/22 where you’ll also find the 3 keys to an effective to-do list.

Today's episode is about a very concrete element of your daily planning.

Feeling happy in your UN career certainly has a lot to do with for example having interesting work and good relationships with peers and supervisors. But a very fundamental requirement for happiness at work - which I think that both organisations and individuals overlook - is to feel that you’re in control of your work and can manage it with the time you have.

I’ve worked with several clients who felt stressed out and frustrated with their work when we started working together. They were wondering whether their job was still right for them and whether maybe they should find something else altogether. 

And after working very consistently on creating an overview, establishing realism and solid prioritizations in their work they found out that that they still liked their work. They’d just lost overview and control which led to overwhelm and stress. (And I know from my own personal experience that it’s difficult to be happy at work when you’re stressed.)

But with that control re-established with effective planning tools that suited them their individual jobs and personalities, they came back and told me that they were happy with their work again.

First Create an Overview
In episode 19, I talked at some length about why you need to start by creating an overview for any kind of planning or effort to make time for important actions. If you haven’t already, I suggest you pause this episode and go back and listen to that episode which can find at www.barbarakandersen.com/19. 

 Without an overview, it’s like you’re standing in the valley looking up on the mountain. It’s very difficult to see what’s the best way to the top – or to find the easiest way to the valley on the other side. But if you can get an overview with a map, then you can plan the best path for yourself.

 So, as I said, a key element of feeling happy with your work is to feel in control of your work. To know that you are in control of your time and your tasks – instead of you being controlled by work.

 And one simple tool but very effective tool to help you with this is an effective to-do list. 

Now, I can almost hear some of you say. "A to-do list? But Barbara, I have a to-do -list – and it just makes me feel overwhelmed!"

3 Common Problems with Most To-Do-Lists
Well, in my experience, there are some key elements that most people are missing when writing their to-do lists. And that’s exactly when it can lead to overwhelm instead of clarity of mind. 

The 3 most important problems are:

1. A lot of people think they’re creating a to-do list, but in reality, they depend on their memory for many of their tasks and only write down some of them. In that way, you use a lot of energy trying to remember things. In fact, much more brainpower than you realise and that’s brainpower you need to do your work – instead of thinking about what is the next task. 

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/22. 

I’m thrilled to be able to share in this episode an interview with my good friend, Dr. Akjemal Magtymova. 

Akjemal is a national of Turkmenistan where she started her UN career in 1998 as a G5 programme assistant with UNFPA. Today (in 2021) she serves with WHO as a D2, Head of Mission and Representative in Syria. 

I asked Akjemal to come on the podcast because she’s had – and has - a very interesting career and I’m fascinated by her approach to work and life and how she, together with her family, has made decisions for her career over the years. In the podcast she also shares her thoughts on mentorship and the importance of human relations, on passion in work – and much more.

Akjemal is used to being interviewed by newspapers and TV stations like Al Jazeera and BBC, so I’m honoured that she took the time to come on the show.

I always feel like I get an injection of UN pride when I talk to Akjemal and I think that in her reflections on her career there is something to take away for all of us. 

And who knows? Maybe some of Akjemal’s reflections will inspire you in your own career?

If you enjoy this episode, then please consider sharing it with a colleague or a friend in the UN who might be motivated or inspired by Akjemal’s story. 

You can either share the episode directly from your podcast app or you can send them a link to the podcast website at www.barbarakandersen.com/21. 

Is it time to get going?

Hello, and welcome to this short episode which is about a mindset issue that many of us struggle with: 

When is it time to take the next step? 

Or to use my favourite car analogy: When is it time to go from “being parked” to “start driving”?

Do you want something else?

For this episode, I was inspired by a conversation with a new client the other day where she shared with me how for several years she had been feeling, well... - not really happy in her job. She had a dream of “something else”, but she had not really been able to articulate that dream. 

And she was also feeling a bit guilty about wanting something else because it was a good job that she was in. She felt she ought to be happy.

The reason she was talking to me about it was that she had finally reached that stage where she knew that she had to act. She could no longer stay in that “dreaming of something else” stage but needed to move to the next stage. She needed to take action. 

Since she still wasn’t sure exactly what that “something else” should be, her first action step was to contact me and get help to figure that out.

Being stuck in the dream stage

And as we spoke, I was reminded of the time when I was in that dream stage (for lack of a better word) myself. 

I spent a fair number of years where I was dreaming of something else, but where I didn’t really know what else to do. 

Because there were many things to be happy about in my job. 

I had great colleagues, a nice boss, interesting work responsibilities and I was working for a wonderful cause. But still, I was not satisfied. And I felt a bit guilty about not being happy. 

When I told people about my job they were impressed. Thought it sounded really exciting. “Yes”, I said. “It is!” 

And I thought: “That’s right. I ought to be happy!” 

And still, I wasn’t. Not because there was anything wrong in any concrete way. But because I needed, and wanted, to move on. Learn new things. Use different sides of my skills. Meet new people. 

It just wasn’t clear to me what that “something else” should be

I often meet clients who are in a similar situation. And I notice that it often also comes up when I speak to people in private contexts. 

So, I have a very important point I want to make today:  

It’s ok to want something else!

 Even if you don’t have a clear career plan.

 t’s ok that you want to quit and move to the next part. Do something else!

Maybe you’re right now longing to move on, but you’re worried about taking that next step. You’re concerned about the unknown.  

Because you know what you’ve got, right? Even if you’re not super happy about what you’ve got.

And quite possibly you’re also exhausted from the daily grind you’re in and find it hard to muster the energy to make a move.

What are you missing out on while you're waiting?

On the weekend a good friend talked about the time when he took up his first management position. It had been a hard transition for him, but also very rewarding. And he reflected upon this and said: “I should have made that move much earlier.” 

The reason why he had waited so long to make that move was that he was so comfortable with knowing his old job very well. He felt very competent there. And very safe. And there’s something to say for that of course. 

But while waiting to take that step, he was missing out on personal and professional development. The excitement of learning and mastering new responsibilities. Have influence. 

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/20

Hello, and welcome to this 3rd episode in a small series I’ve called: “Plan and Succeed”.

Have you ever had that feeling at the end of the workday that you couldn’t really tell what you’d been doing all day? 

Back in the days, I distinctively remember evenings where my husband asked how my day had been, and I responded something like “umm, ok, I guess?”. All the while I was frantically searching my brain to find out what I actually had done that day. 

Sure, I’d been crazy busy attending endless meetings and responding to questions from colleagues and clients in between meetings. And whenever there was a small break somewhere, I had been checking and responding to emails. 

But what had I actually achieved with all this busyness? 

That was sometimes hard for me to put a finger on. For as a good friend phrased it: I’d been "running around like a headless chicken". An image that really says it all…

Because on a workday like that, I’d been racing through the day trying to tackle all the requests and tasks thrown at me. But I had totally lost the overview. And that left me with a vague, but unpleasant feeling of having lost control.

Having an overview sounds like a very simple thing, yet so many of us tend to want to rush right into action, that we overlook the essential starting point of creating an overview. 

Do You Know Where You’re Going?

Maybe you remember my car analogy from episode 3, the one called “What Drives You – And What Drains You?”? 

Well, have you ever been driving your car to a place where you were a little late and now you were not entirely sure which way to take? 

And then you decided that you didn’t have the time to stop and look at the map or set the GPS. So, you just drove on, hoping that you were going the right way. But unfortunately, you got even more late, because you got even more lost before you decided that you really had to stop, and course correct.

The most effective thing would of course have been to get your overview and your bearings before you started out in the first place 

And the second most effective thing would have been to stop at the time you realised you might be lost and get your overview back. Look at the map or set the GPS. 

I’m sure you’ve guessed that I’m talking about my own experience here! And when it has happened, I have every time promised myself to always make sure to get an overview and set the directions before I start driving next time 

So why do we keep ending up in these situations? Not only in traffic but also in the workplace and in life in general?

Can you see the wood for the trees?

We’re so busy getting work DONE, that we start racing off without being sure if we’re going in the right direction. Because often in our work, we can’t see the wood for the trees. We’re so busy dealing with immediate urgencies that we sometimes lose track of what our bigger objectives are. 

Creating – and keeping - an overview is vital for succeeding with any kind of endeavour. 

Because when you have an overview, you have the full picture. And then you can make clever and effective prioritizations.

And on top of that, you also create a sense of calm for yourself. 

Because even if there’s a lot to do, and even if you might not realistically be able to do it all yourself, with an overview, you know you haven’t forgotten anything. Which is a fear that is often a big stress factor in itself. 

And when you have an overview, you can prioritize and decide what needs to happen. 

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/19

Hello, and welcome to this 2nd episode in a series I’ve called: “Plan & Succeed”.

 In the previous episode, I argued that good planning and organizational skills will help you both in your daily work – and in your career. (That’s the episode called “Can Planning Help Boost Your UN Career?” which you can find at www.barbarakandersen.com/17). 

 Planning, structure and prioritisation will of course help you be more effective with your day-to-day tasks and projects. Which will make you feel better about your work and your professional life. And which will certainly add to your professional reputation – and in that way to your career development. 

But it’s also essential for deliberately setting specific and actionable goals and milestones for your own career development. And, maybe most importantly, helping you take action on these goals. Creating that happy UN Career for yourself! 

Do you enjoy working with goals?

Or do you maybe have more of a love/hate relationship with goals? 

Many of my clients are in that last category. 

 They often love the idea of goalsetting. When it’s still far in the distance and the goals make them feel industrious and ambitious.

 But then, often when the goals are set, they suddenly feel burdensome, and you can start worrying that you might not have the strength and the resources to reach them. 

Then it can feel like the goals are looming over you. Like concrete blocks that will fall on your head if you don’t work hard enough and reach your goals on time. And that doesn’t feel motivating at all. 

 I’ve definitely experienced this love/hate relationship with goals myself until I learned how good goalsetting works for me.

 So, I want to show you how to enjoy working with goals because you’ll see how clear your goals get. And you’ll appreciate the way well-framed goals will help pull you towards the dreams you want to achieve.

So, why are goals so important? 

Because goal setting can be a very powerful tool in your professional development!

What’s great about using goals in a very deliberate way is that they are the way to making your dreams and visions (and your ambitions) tangible. When you do it right, they will

-        Push you towards the dream of the vision you want to achieve, and they’ll

-        Pull you at the same time

 They help push you because they remind you of your ambition. That you have made this promise to yourself and that you don’t want to let yourself down on. This becomes especially powerful if you also create accountability for yourself.

And they pull you because if you have created your goal in the right way then the image and the feeling that you have of your goal will be a strong attraction and motivation for you. Just like putting a beautiful photo of your next holiday location on the wall will pull you every time you look at it.

So, well-developed goals are really the way to move on your dreams and visions. And ambitions!

 The SMART way to powerful and motivating goals

There’s a great guide for setting up goals, and you might already have heard about it. It’s called SMART. 

However, even if you already know about it, my experience is that most people don’t really use it very well. If they use it all. And that’s a big shame because SMART is both easy and effective.

 So, this is how it works...

 Read the full show notes at http://www.barbarakandersen.com/18

Welcome to this 1st episode in a new series called: “Plan and Succeed”.

In the last few episodes, I’ve talked about some of the big issues around career and work life. Your visions. Your dreams. And your values. So, basically all about what fulfils you in your work and life.

However, a very important element in succeeding with all of this is your ability to make your visions and dreams tangible. And take action on them. 

So, in this new series I’ll share some very simple, but very effective techniques for planning, creating overview and – maybe most importantly – prioritising your time, your attention and your resources. 

You can find the complete show notes for today’s episode at www.Barbarakandersen.com/17.

What’s really important to understand here is that good habits and techniques around planning, will help you not only become more effective with your day-to-day work tasks. But also help you reach the bigger goals for your career and for your personal life. 

How does planning help?

No matter our personality, our job function, our family status, we all benefit from some level of structure, overview and clear prioritization. 

In fact, your ability to plan and prioritise can be a key determining factor for creating and maintaining a happy UN Career. 

Your ability to plan and prioritise is critical in order for you to:

• succeed with your work projects
• have a general peace of mind, knowing that you’re on top of your work
• sustain a balance between those work tasks that are urgent (of which we all seem to have too many)
• – and those tasks that are important, but don’t have a deadline (and are therefore often left on the back burner too long. Think for example: strategy, development, health, training, etc.)
• find time for planning and executing long term professional and career development
• and last, but not least, to create and maintain a balance between work and home life

Planning is worth your time!

A big eye opener for me was when I heard the quote from the American time management guru, David Allen, which says something like this: 

”For every minute you use on planning, you save 10 minutes on execution!” 

 When I heard that the first time, I thought: “Hmm, that sounds just too good to be true.” It actually seemed sort of counterintuitive to me, because it often felt like I had so much on, that I couldn’t possibly waste 5 minutes on planning. I just wanted to throw myself headfirst into the email inbox!

But, in my own personal experience, it has proven true again and again – that, really, for every minute I use on planning I save more on the execution of the task or the project. 

It’s always more effective to get an overview and prioritise your time. And your resources. 

The better I think through

• my priorities
• my planning and 
• the most effective way to deal with a task
• the right order of action steps
• the amount of time I have available and 
• the time I need for a task

The more I do of all that – the better my day and my week flows. The more I get done. The more successful I am with my goals. 

And the happier I feel at the end of my workday.

(And this is also what the people I help report back to me.)

So, planning really is well worth your time!

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/17

Welcome to this 5th episode in a small series I’ve called: “Professional Development - Job Hunting and Your CV”.

In the previous episode, I talked about how to use all the work you have to do anyway for your annual performance review to fuel your own work on your career development. You can find that episode at www.barbarakandersen.com/15.

In today’s episode, I want you to take a longer view of your career. You could say that we’re going to have a look into the crystal ball! Because I want to invite you to think about what your CV will look like in 10 years. 

Where will you be? And what do you want your CV to look like? What do you want it to reflect about your professional life?

Are you a planner? Or do you prefer to wait and see what happens?

I’ve noticed three different ways of approaching career planning:

1. There is no plan - one day simply follows the other. You show up, do your job and hope for the best. Actually – there is no plan here.
2. You have a clear plan and vision for your career. First this kind of job, then that kind of job. Always preparing for the next step
3. You have dreams, but there’s no clear plan. Apart from your education, you probably haven’t taken major action to drive yourself toward a clearly defined goal. It feels more like you have navigated the flow and the possibilities that showed up.

 In my experience, the last group is the biggest one. 

 And this was also my path for many years. I always felt lucky when I got a job. Then I worked hard to do that job as well as I could.  I realised what I liked and didn’t like about it. But I was very much flowing with the opportunities that showed up. I can see now that I was more reactive than proactive in my career back then. 

Maybe you recognize this scenario?
You got the job. You learned to do the job. Learned from the job. Settled in. Got comfortable with the job. Then, slowly you got a bit tired of the job or the content of the job - or the general setting you were in. 

Slowly you started to think about “what else?” What could be interesting? Where could I go?

So, maybe you don’t really have a plan.
But the truth is that if you dare ask yourself, there are things that you’d like to see happen for yourself. 

Maybe you’ve had that question in a job interview: “Where do you see yourself five years from now?” Was it easy to respond to? And have you acted on it?

Many of us hope that opportunities will show up. However, experience has shown me that hope is not really a strategy. 

I don’t believe we can decide or predict exactly what will happen five or 10 years from now. But we can envision what we’d like our professional life to look like. And we can take action to move in that direction.

Is there a 4th way?
So, your CV is essentially a shorthand version of your career. Is that something that is happening to you? Or are you setting the direction?

 Are you proactive or reactive?

 If you want to become more proactive, that doesn’t mean that you have to – or should - plan everything in great detail. Not at all, actually. But the first essential step is to become aware of what direction you want to go in.

Read the full show notes at www.barbarakandersen.com/16.